Sports

NHL playoff plan rewards mediocrity

Not once since the NHL realigned into six divisions in 1998-99 have the top three teams in a conference come out of the same division, yet that’s the likelihood this year in the Eastern Conference, where the powerhouse Atlantic’s Rangers, Penguins and Flyers hold the best three records, respectively, with the possibility the Devils could finish fourth-best.

Yet, under the current playoff structure, the clubs can be seeded no better than first, fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively, meaning that one of the East’s best three regular-season clubs is guaranteed to be eliminated in the first round.

It’s a format, adopted by the always lowest-common-denominator-friendly NHL, which is designed to reward the winners of weak divisions with ensured top-three conference seeds while pushing runners-up in muscle-bound divisions onto lower rungs and into theoretically disadvantageous matchups starting on the road.

This inequity would be even worse under the NHL’s proposed four-conference realignment plan under which the first two rounds of the playoffs would be intramural battles in a return to the format that existed from 1982 through 1993.

For if that were in effect this season, that would mean only one of the conference’s best three (perhaps four) regular-season teams could advance past the second round to the conference finals.

This proposed structure would result in an even more patently unfair setup than currently exists. It would routinely set up the most successful teams for premature failure and guarantee the fans who pay the freight all season long would be shortchanged at the most important time of the year (though the trade-off is they would get refunds on exorbitant playoff tickets).

The NHL Players’ Association is likely to accept the proposed four-conference realignment under revised conditions as a part of the new collective bargaining agreement.

But because this structure will eliminate the East/West conference championships as we know them, the new playoff format should be designed to allow the best four teams to advance to the NHL semifinals and the best two teams to meet in the Stanley Cup Finals.

This would include a structure of crossover rounds based on a pure points-seeding, and though that might feature inequities owing to an unbalanced schedule, those would be comparatively minimal.

If the Rangers and Penguins are the best two teams in the league, they should have the opportunity to meet in the Finals, and of course ditto for the Blues and Canucks. Why can’t the Rangers and Islanders have the chance to meet in the Finals and the same for the Red Wings and Blackhawks?

Of course, success and failure are cyclical in pro sports (except, excluding ancient history, for the Maple Leafs) but playoff formats should be designed to highlight and reward success, not punish it.

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The Premiere Games in Europe that have opened each NHL season since 2007 will not be played next season, but not because of “uncertainty” relating to collective bargaining.

Instead, Slap Shots has learned, the games will not be scheduled because the league did not accept the NHLPA’s proposal that the NHL would bear the full responsibility to pay the costs of damages that would be paid to European promoters if a lockout forced cancellation of these matches while the union would accept full responsibility for reimbursement in the event that a strike forced the games to be canceled.

“The NHL was not willing to proceed on that basis,” NHLPA executive director Don Fehr wrote in a Feb. 16 memo sent to player agents and obtained by Slap Shots. “We remain willing to revisit this issue on [this] basis.”

Fehr also revealed the league rejected the union’s request made “more than a year ago” to play a World Cup tournament next preseason.

“The NHL was not at all interested, and told us because we do not have a CBA in place after this season, they did not want to run the risk that the tournament would be played and a lockout could take place right after that, as happened immediately after the 2004 World Cup,” Fehr wrote. “So that idea died there.”

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The idea the Canadiens would be able to buy out the remaining two years and $10 million of Scott Gomez’s contract all but certainly died when the center sustained a concussion on March 12.

It would seem impossible Gomez could be cleared to return prior to a training camp physical, thus further complicating both the future of the center — whose career has spiraled into disrepute and who likely would have been better off being cut loose into free agency — and the decisions confronting the incoming administration of the currently Headless Habs.

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This just in: Toronto general manager Brian Burke became so incensed upon hearing the mock chants of “Let’s Go Blue Jays” during Thursday’s Flyers’ rout of the Maple Leafs at the Air Canada Centre he fired Jays’ manager John Farrell.